Budget battle: The road ahead

President Barack Obama’s 20-pound budget was released Monday and with it an equally weighty question: Just how can the White House, along with a fractious and hostile House Republican majority and a dysfunctional Senate, pass anything?

Despite the fact that Congress hasn’t passed a long-term budget bill in more than a year, both the White House and congressional Republicans express confidence — in private — that they’ll be able to forge some kind of compromise, although nobody seems to know how or when.

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The paths to a deal — or destruction — are too numerous to list, and each is a roll of the dice for Obama and Republicans. But several scenarios seem more likely than others, a dozen people involved in the process told POLITICO.

The first path is a big bipartisan compromise — perhaps months in the making — that begins with a series of short-term stopgap spending bills and culminates in an agreement that includes more budget cuts and fewer tax hikes than in Obama’s proposal.

“There will be a larger deal, whether it’s later this year or we sort of have to stake out these things for the rest of this year and it’s next year that these things come together,” one Obama administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity so as not to compromise its bargaining position.

Another route: bundling a deal on the 2012 budget by raising the debt ceiling, a showdown that looms in May. This is a more unpredictable scenario that one administration observer likened to a “game of chicken.” But some Republicans see this as the best way to extract concessions from Democrats.

And there’s always the chance there will be no deal. If that happens, Obama and Republicans could continue to pass short-term spending deals, a practice both sides decry as long-term fiscal suicide.

Then there’s the doomsday scenario: One side, most likely newly elected conservative Republicans in the House, could precipitate a crisis by shutting the government down — as Newt Gingrich did in 1995 when he was House speaker and Bill Clinton was president.

The fear of a shutdown — which redefined Clinton’s relationship with a Republican Congress — is probably the biggest spur for a deal, and it’s the administration’s trump card in what promises to be a bruising battle.

“What we do have agreement on is that it would not be prudent to shut the government down,” said Jack Lew, Obama’s budget director. “And we look forward to working through these differences once things settle down a little bit more.”

That said, there are many questions about the road ahead.

What exactly is Obama trying to accomplish?

He’s aiming to stave off a government shutdown, for sure — but also make the GOP look silly, divided and irresponsible in the process.